The Excerpt podcast: Dolly Parton isn't just a country music star; she's a rock star now too

On a special episode of The Excerpt podcast: Dolly Parton isn't just a country music star; she's a rock star now too!

Dolly Parton has been a fixture in country music for decades, and now she's ready to be a rock star as well. Fittingly enough, her new album out now is called Rockstar. Singing alongside her on 30 songs are some of the rock world's most legendary musicians, including Paul McCartney, John Fogerty, Pat Benatar, Lizzo and Miley Cyrus. Dolly Parton joins The Excerpt to share the story of how it all came together.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below.This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.  

Melissa Ruggieri:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Melissa Ruggieri. Today is November 30th, 2023, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt.

Dolly Parton has been a fixture of country music for decades, and now she's ready to be a rockstar as well. Fittingly enough, her new album, out now, is called "Rockstar". Singing alongside her on 30 songs are some of the rock world's most legendary stars, including Paul McCartney, John Fogerty, and Pat Benatar. Here to tell me how it all came together is Dolly Parton herself. And Dolly, thank you so much for joining me. How are you?

Dolly Parton:

Well, I am fine, and thank you for having me. You were talking about all those great names, and I have some wonderful memories of doing this album with them, so we can talk about whatever you want to talk about today.

Melissa Ruggieri:

Tell me a little bit about the construction of the album. And you announced this about a year ago at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, just after that. How long did it take to wrangle all of these major music stars? Because I don't think you missed one, or maybe you missed one, but we'll talk about him in a second.

Dolly Parton:

Well, actually, it took a year to do this album, from the time I started recording the song and trying to get all the people together. And then you got to do the mixes and you got to do the mastering, and then you got to get the stuff in to do the vinyls and all that, get it all pressed and ready to go. So it takes a lot of time. I used to hear people say, "Took a year to do a rock and roll album, or a couple of years," and I thought, "How can that be?" And now I know. Because a lot of it, taking the time to find all these people and get all the recordings done.

Melissa Ruggieri:

Well, were you in the studio with all of them when you recorded these songs?

Dolly Parton:

No, I was not. I was in the studio with some of them. John Fogerty, you had mentioned, I love him to death. He came down to Nashville, stayed a few days, and we got in the studio to record our song, and love just doing it like the old days. And then I got to sing in the studio with Ann Wilson. She came down and we got to sing. And of course, Debbie Harry, of Blondie, loved her. She came down and we got to be in the studio. Stevie Nicks.

And so I got to sing with several of them, but a lot of them just work in their own studios. In this new day and age of recording, you just send out the files and everybody works and sends it back, and then you kind of work like that. But it was fun either way. We were closely attached musically while we were doing it, talking about, "Well, do you want me to sing this part? What if I did this? Can I put more harmonies on?" That sort of thing. So it was still very personal even though they were, some of them far away.

Melissa Ruggieri:

Just from the experience of having them in the studio versus the ones that you had to do remotely, I'm sure there was just a difference in the dynamic between everybody there. Because like you said, when somebody's in the room with you, you could talk to them a little bit differently than sending them back a file and saying, "Hey, can we do a little bit more here?"

Dolly Parton:

It was personally more satisfying, but I don't really think you notice the difference, actually, on the real record. I know myself the things that I enjoyed so much, but I thought all the records turned out. I thought all the people that were on the records, well, it sounded like we were right there together.

Melissa Ruggieri:

Well, when you and I talked earlier this year when you were working on something else, and you mentioned that Mick Jagger was the one person that you were trying to get for "I Can't Get No Satisfaction", and that if he didn't, you would quote, this is one of my favorite quotes ever, "Kick his bony ass." So should he be worried? Because you didn't get him.

Dolly Parton:

But I got a bony ass too, that I tried to get my bony to get his skinny butt together. But actually I found out later that he was working, secretly, on their album, the Rolling Stones' new album, and we kept crossing paths and he said, "I'd love to do something, but let's don't do 'Satisfaction' because I've done that so much." So I got Pink and Brandi Carlile to sing on that with me, which I'm glad I did. It made a great girl song. But with Mick, we just kept trying to get it done, and then I ran out of time for my time limit, and so we didn't ever get a chance to get together long enough to figure out what we could have done, so I just missed that. Well, maybe he'll have me on one of his songs one day, in his next album.

Melissa Ruggieri:

Or you could do a sequel with another 30 songs.

Dolly Parton:

Ah, no, I don't think I need to ever do another rock album. I never intended to do that, actually. I was just recording songs, just demoing songs, to see which ones I thought would be the best, but they all kept turning out great. Then I got the big idea to bring all these artists on, and then I couldn't leave anything off. And I thought, "Well, it's an event anyway, and it's something I can leave for my legacy, and they can do compilation albums from now on." So I thought, "Well, why not just go for it and just do it one time, and do it big?"

Melissa Ruggieri:

What were you looking for in choosing the particular songs? What came first, the song or the, "I can get, Ann Wilson has always said she'd love to sing with me. Let me see if she wants to come do a Heart song." Or was it more, "Here's a list of songs"? And I'm also curious, how long was this list of songs that you had hoped to record when you first started out?

Dolly Parton:

I wanted to do a lot of songs that my husband liked. He's a big rock and roll fan, always has been. So I knew certain songs he loved, for instance, like "Satisfaction", and he loved Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones. And so I also wanted to choose songs that I thought were suitable for my voice, that I could actually do justice, that I could actually sing them well. But I had already recorded these songs, I just went in the studio doing them on a demo scale, just trying different things. But I thought, "Well, I'll just listen, see what I do well, and what I can kind of choose the ones that I think I'll go ahead and master."

And then they all start turning out great. And then in the middle of it, I had made a statement when I was at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame saying, "Hey, I'm going to do a rock and roll album. Any of you stars out there want to join me?" And different ones had called, "Yeah, if you're serious, we'll join you." But I was just recording it, and I hadn't really thought that much about whether or not I would have other people on. But then once I started recording these songs and getting all these artists on these great songs, they just kept going and going and going, and I couldn't leave anything off. And I thought, like I said earlier, "I'll just do it all, and just do it one time."

Melissa Ruggieri:

Well, were there any particular songs that really made you feel like a rockstar when you were singing them?

Dolly Parton:

Yeah, a few of them. When I was doing, with Ann Wilson, when I was doing "Magic Man", I really got into that one. But when I was singing "Free Bird" and that big fade with that, and I was just ad-libbing stuff, and I was just in that head zone and I was thinking, "Wow, I'm just going to let my spirit fly like that free bird." I'm a free bird on all of these songs, really. So I thought, "Well, if it don't turn out good, nobody has to ever hear them."

Melissa Ruggieri:

So you have a couple, or several actually, original songs on the album as well. Why was it important for you to include those and not just make it strictly a covers album?

Dolly Parton:

Well, I'm a publisher and a writer. I wanted to have some of my own. I thought, "Well, if it's a big album, I want to put that money in my publishing company," because everybody knows I write. And I also wanted them to think that I could write something that was fitting for a record like that. I co-wrote a lot of them with Kent Wells. For the same thing, I wanted to put that in his publishing company as well. So we wanted to have a few of our own that we could take personal great pride in.

Melissa Ruggieri:

Did anyone surprise you with, especially on some of those originals, and you have some people joining you, any artists that you were maybe sure how it was going to work out, but then turned out to be just amazing?

Dolly Parton:

I thought they all turned out to be amazing. I was really, really proud of Sting. I love the song "Every Breath You Take", and when I asked Sting if he would do it, I sent him my version, and he was very complimentary. He really thought it was really, really good. And he said, "I would love to try some things." So it was just the two of us singing on that whole thing. He did all these beautiful harmonies himself, sounded like a whole group of people. And I did three-part harmonies with myself, so I was really proud that he wanted to spend that much time. Same thing with Steve Perry. Spent a lot of time working on the harmonies.

Melissa Ruggieri:

Your "Stairway to Heaven" with Lizzo doing the flute. I mean, that's such an inspired choice, I think. When did you become aware of the fact that she does play the flute, and to use her in that capacity?

Dolly Parton:

I had seen her on TV and I had heard her talk about the flute, and I had seen her play it. And so I know there was the flute on the original record. And so rather than just get a studio musician or somebody to play it, we thought, "Well, why not get Lizzo?" Because she was so hot at the time, and she just killed it. I loved it. And she's great on that flute. She is so great. She named it Sasha. Sasha Flute.

Melissa Ruggieri:

When I saw that in the lighter notes, I was like, "Sasha Flute. This just has to be what she's calling the flute, not an actual person named Sasha."

Dolly Parton:

She named it herself like it's a person, yeah.

Melissa Ruggieri:

You and Miley sing together on "Wrecking Ball", and how special was it to sing one of her songs?

Dolly Parton:

Well, it was just necessary for me. I love "Wrecking Ball", I love that song, and I love Miley. But she was one of the first people I thought about. I knew that I had to have Miley on my rock album because Miley is the new rock chick in my mind these days. I love her, her whole voice, her whole persona. She's just a rockstar, and she's my goddaughter, and I've loved her all her life. And we're very close, and we sing great together. And so I thought, "Well, I'm going to do the one I like the best," and that's "Wrecking Ball". And so I asked her if she'd join me and she said, "Well, of course, Aunt Dolly, I'm going to join you." So she did, and I'm really proud of that.

Melissa Ruggieri:

Well, I love that... You mentioned publishing and everything a little bit earlier, and I love how you worked in a little bit of "I Will Always Love You" at the end of "Wrecking Ball", but then when you bring it back to "I Dreamed About Elvis", that you sort of tell the story of what happened with that song, and Elvis was supposed to record it and everything. And having Ronnie McDowell, by the way, I mean, that's a pretty perfect choice to sing a song about Elvis.

Dolly Parton:

He sounds just like Elvis. And we recorded that song 22 years ago, and that was my original vocal, and that was the real Jordanaires on that. I think Kent changed a couple of the instruments, but for the most part, I think he just added a guitar apart or a couple of things. But that was the original cut.

Melissa Ruggieri:

Oh, I didn't realize that.

Dolly Parton:

So yeah, I wrote that right, not long after I, Elvis didn't do the song, or it just kept lingering in my mind how it would've sounded if Elvis and I thought, "Well, I'll write a song about seeing Elvis in her dream." I tried to figure out a clever way to get him in there. That's one of my favorite songs on the album.

Melissa Ruggieri:

It's a great song. And "I Will Always Love You", what did you think of that being used in "Priscilla", the movie?

Dolly Parton:

I allowed them to license that for her, because she had told me that Elvis sang that song for her, a little bit of it, when they were coming down the steps of the courthouse when they divorced. And so she had told me, after Elvis died, after I was working with her on something, they were going to do a play on her life, and I was going to write some of the music. So she had told me that Elvis loved that song. Of course, that was after we'd already missed out on the opportunity for him to record it. And so that was a heartbreaker when Colonel Tom Parker wouldn't let Elvis do it because he wanted my publishing and I couldn't let him have it.

Melissa Ruggieri:

You collaborate with two Beatles. First of all, was that done in the studio? And even if it wasn't, though, I mean, was there ever a, "Is this really happening?" moment, to be with McCartney and Ringo?

Dolly Parton:

Well, actually, I had known Paul. I'd met him on different occasions, saying hi. We kind of would visit on occasion, just backstage, say, "Hey, how you doing? What's up?" We're talking about Nashville or whatever. But I just asked him if he would sing with me on it, and then he said, "Yeah, and I'll play piano if you want me to." And of course, that sent me over the moon. And then it was after I recorded it with him that I thought, "Wow, Ringo. If I could get Ringo to replace the drums that I had on, that would be great to have the two of them, the two Beatles, living Beatles, on the same record." But then Peter Frampton played a little bit on it, and also Mick Fleetwood played some percussion, so that made it really even more special.

Melissa Ruggieri:

Are there any other major projects out there that you would still really like to tackle?

Dolly Parton:

Yeah, I'm tackling one right now. I'm doing my life story as a Broadway musical. I've already written all the music and I'm recording that now. The script is already done, so it's more about the music, and then starting to cast and get all the right people. So to me, my next big album will probably be my cast album.

Melissa Ruggieri:

That's awesome. No, that'll be perfect for Broadway, actually. And I'm just curious, since we're heading into the holiday season, as far as Christmas music goes, do you have a favorite Christmas song?

Dolly Parton:

Oh, I love all Christmas songs. I really do. To me, there's nothing like Christmas, singing all those great songs that the carolers sing. I have a couple of Christmas albums. My Christmas album a couple years ago is "A Holly Dolly Christmas", and "Holly Jolly Christmas" is one of my favorite songs. And then the album I did with Kenny Rogers, "Christmas to Remember" years ago, is still one of the biggest Christmas albums of all time. So I'm really proud of that, but I just love all the Christmas music.

Melissa Ruggieri:

Well, Dolly, thank you so much for joining us. It's been so great to talk to you. Make sure to check out "Rockstar", because it is one heck of a collection of rockstars, and the ultimate rockstar in attitude, Dolly Parton.

Dolly Parton:

Well, thank you so much, and thanks for taking the time to talk to me about it.

Melissa Ruggieri:

Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Melissa Ruggieri. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.